Versus Versace Store in SoHo: Caught in Transition

Versace has opened a standalone Versus store on a prime plot in SoHo, a two-minute walk from an existing Versace store.Credit
Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

In February 2014, Versace sold a 20 percent stake to the Blackstone Group, a private equity fund. A news release from the two parties stated Versace would use the investment to bolster its retail store network, boost its e-commerce business, accelerate its focus on accessories and develop its portfolio of brands, in particular Versus Versace.

They’ve kept their word. Less than two years later, Versace has opened a stand-alone Versus store on a prime plot in SoHo, a two-minute walk from an existing Versace store. This raises a question of taxonomy. Is Versus a diffusion line? A secondary line? A sibling line? An offshoot label?

“My baby!” is what Donatella Versace called the line this year in a Vogue interview. The baby was born in 1989, when Gianni Versace still headed the parent brand, and it existed as a Donatella-designed complement aimed at a younger audience. If Versace was Cindy Crawford in floor-length gold metal mesh evening wear, Versus was Kate Moss in a cropped turtleneck the color of banana taffy.

The line was shut down amid Versace’s financial woes in 2005 and rebooted four years later with a capsule collection designed by Christopher Kane, who stayed on for three years. Since his departure, it has experimented with guest designers like J. W. Anderson and the singer M.I.A.

In January, Anthony Vaccarello was named creative director of Versus. This made sense. The young Belgian-born designer has a few things in common with Donatella Versace. He is of southern Italian stock (both Vaccarello’s parents are Sicilian), he loves dresses, he loves black, he loves cutouts, he loves hardware accents, and he designs clothes intended to project, above all, a charismatic sexiness.

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Credit
Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

The new Versus store offers a snapshot of the fluid relationship between the two properties. The internal fabric-care labels on items read “Gianni Versace,” while the labels at the collar read “Versus.” Occasionally, a signature Versace motif, like the jumbo gold safety-pin, will appear on a Versus item. Versus is like a younger sibling who plunders her older sister’s closet and occasionally makes off with a piece of borrowed flair.

Mr. Vaccarello’s vision of feminine allure has a cooler tone than that of Donatella Versace. It is more contained. (Literally.) There are sheer blouses in embroidered or printed silk ($425) with just the barest hint of Italianate bling in the form of silver lion’s head buttons. There are miniskirts overlaid with a floor-skimming layer of botanical-print silk ($595). There is a tapered black wool trouser ($450) that a woman of any profession could wear to work without arousing concern from H.R.

That doesn’t mean the store skimps on items designed to bare 80 percent of a body’s surface area. A crimson acetate-viscose shift dress ($475) stops at midthigh and features a shiny lion’s head affixed to the upper left bust region, in case people aren’t sure where to look. An oddly conceived skintight minidress ($695) is free of ornament except for a fist-size lion’s head harnessed one inch from the armpit, which is not a hugely flattering zone on any person.

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Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

One surefire way to tell the difference between Versus and Versace is price. Today, a buttery soft leather jacket from Versus is $980. A buttery soft leather jacket from the Versace store up the street is $3,975. That change of roughly 300 percent holds steady, more or less, across all categories between the brands.

If the Versus customer is (slightly) less money-drenched than the Versace customer, it is otherwise difficult to construct her social identity. Who is the Versus girl? I couldn’t extrapolate from customers on any of my visits, because there weren’t any. (The store’s deliberately quiet opening may be partly to blame for that. The nonstop rain couldn’t have helped, either.)

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Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

Questions percolated as I slithered among the racks. What does the Versus girl do with her weekends? How does she take her coffee? Where does she buy her lingerie? With what level of enthusiasm does she approach astrology?

She is clearly a girl who wants to be at the center of a certain kind of attention. But whose?

The store’s aesthetic is less Italian than indeterminately continental, like the lobby of an expensive business hotel in Madrid, London or Milan. There are purplish bottles of fragrance on display, black leather cubes to sit upon and bronze-framed mirrors everywhere. There’s no point in the store at which a shopper can’t see herself reflected back from at least three gleaming surfaces.

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Credit
Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

“It seems like the kind of brand that would thrive in the duty-free section of an international airport,” my friend Kate said.

The observation united a number of things about Versus: its affluence, its ever-in-transition character, its inclination toward wrinkle-resistant synthetic fabric blends.

This is a curious state of limbo, given that the core Versace brand has more than enough personality to spread among its properties. Perhaps the Blackstone investment just needs a bit more time to sink in. If any brand can convert money into glamour, it’s this one.